The Tarnished Golden Hello Has Flopped
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- Published: Tuesday, 09 December 2025 12:17
- Written by Peter Ingle
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The £20000 ‘Golden Hello‘ scheme was set up to provide an appealing incentive that would encourage dentists to go and work in some of the "dental deserts" where NHS care was not available.
There have been reports of poor uptake and a recent story from the BBC sheds some light on the schemes failure to draw many new dentists into high needs areas. Under the scheme which was announced in May 2024 but retained by the incoming Labour administration, NHS England identified deserving areas, and those ICB’s were allocated a certain number of places.
Dentist Dipali Chokshi was offered three of Cambridgeshire’s 12 placements, but was unable to fill any. When she heard that only four places across the county had been filled, she said: "I’m not surprised that other practices have faced the same challenges that we have."
The scheme came with conditions requiring dentists to work for three years to get the full payment, receiving £10000 in year one, and £5000 in each of the following two years. There was a pro rata option for part time posts, and minimum UDA targets. These varied, but for a UK graduate with 3 or more years GDC registration working full time, it was set at 6000 UDAs.
Dr Chokshi, who runs practices in Cambridgeshire, including in March and Littleport, said that the scheme would be discussed whenever enquiries were made about vacancies at her practices.
"Every time we did offer it we did find that dentists were hesitant to accept it, because they weren’t sure about committing to the NHS for that sort of period of time for that quantity of work," she said.
She added that it had been an, "uphill struggle considering that the offer has been open in the region for some considerable time now. We thought it would be a lifeline (but) it hasn’t turned out to be the lifeline we thought it would be, which is really sad because we were hopeful when we received it."
She observed that dentists are becoming increasingly disillusioned by the NHS and said it had "become financially unviable to continue to provide a quality service".
A report to Cambridgeshire County Council’s health scrutiny committee on Tuesday said four placements had been filled, in Fenland, East Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire.
The practices where the other eight placements had been offered were now: "being reviewed to ascertain if they are still actively trying to recruit or if it would be more beneficial to step them down from this initiative to open this up to another practice who has previously expressed an interest".
A spokesperson for NHS Cambridgeshire and Peterborough said it understood the importance of accessing NHS dental care and was "working hard with dentists" to increase appointments.
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